The Legacy Of Newton, Akehurst, & Complicit Councillors!

There has been much hand wringing by our councillors regarding what is occurring in Neerim Road, Carnegie. Many crocodile tears have been shed and many comments regarding parking, infrastructure, overall capacity, etc. For all the words, nothing has been done, much less achieved – except more and more development. In fact, a kilometre or so of Neerim Road represents the entire new dwelling numbers for Glen Eira – pre zones. Thus one road, one suburb, and thousands of residents have had to carry the burden of a year’s supply of new dwellings. This single road, even post zones and development everywhere, is responsible for close to one-third of new dwellings in the entire municipality. Add what’s happening in Truganini and Carnegie is well and truly the sacrificial lamb. This is the insane legacy of Newton, Akehurst and his lackey, compliant councillors!

Below we feature several stretches of Neerim Road, and the number of units that have been approved for development – where previously there generally was one single house. There are other stretches of road we haven’t included since these screen dumps should give readers a fair idea of what has, and is, occurring. Two of the numbers cited have been refused by council – but given the zoning and the pro-development agenda – we are pretty confident that the developers will go to VCAT and get their wishes. We would also bet, that of these hundreds and hundreds of units, less than 1% would be three bedroom apartments. But as Hyams has stated – ‘diversity’ is not for ‘individual dwellings’ but for the municipality as a whole!

PS: From a Carnegie resident – a letterbox drop. And Council still wants residents to believe that all this development has nothing whatsoever to do with the zones!

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The first map is very scarey. You can’t add that many new apartments without significant flow on effects on traffic, drainage, lack of open space and general liveability. Occasionally I drive down Neerim Road and it is very narrow in parts making conditions even worse for residents and visitors. The road will fast become a 4 storey canyon of ugly grey and black. In four or five years time it will be a slum. The tragedy is that many long term residents will be forced out. That could be part of the plan anyway because then there will be more for the developers and council income.

Neither Cr Hyams nor any other councillor appears to have read the Glen Eira Planning Scheme. Under the State Planning Policy Framework [SPPF] there is an EXPLICIT strategy to “encourage a diversity of housing types at higher densities in and around activity centres”.

The Scheme also has a strategy for precinct structure plans to be developed to create greater housing choice and diversity. Metropolitan Melbourne policy has as an objective “provide a diversity of housing in defined locations that cater for different households and are close to jobs and services”.

Then there’s Build Environment and Heritage: “ensure new development or redevelopment contributes to community and cultural life by improving…diversity”. By policy, new development is targeted at the housing diversity [sic] areas. Again under SPPF, new medium-density is supposed to be well-designed, respect neighbourhood character, improve housing choice, and support opportunities for a wide range of income groups to choose housing in well-serviced locations.

Under Local Planning Policy Framework [LPPF], new development in housing diversity areas is supposed to be a mixture of single houses, two dwelling developments, and *some* multi-unit development where the multi-unit development is sensitive and respectful to the scale of existing residential development on adjoining sites.

The are many other policies that Council [and VCAT, if Council accidently does apply its Scheme] routinely ignores, hence the unseemly spectacle of councillors disgreeing with their own scheme. Scheme calls for structure plans, and preferred character statements. Councillors say “no way, not while we’re in power”.

On Friday I drove my family to Monash university for a graduation ceremony. It took 30 minutes, of which the first 15 minutes were spent travelling 500m to get out of Carnegie, and the other 15 minutes to get to the Clayton campus. Fifteen minutes for 500m on a local road is unacceptable. It violates the 30 or 40 policies, objectives and strategies concerning traffic in the planning scheme. The real legacy of the Akehurst-Newton years is that councillors have been so intimidated that planning decisions are no long made in accordance with their planning scheme, and with reckless disregard for the consequences.

The much hand wringing and crocodile tears just aren’t cutting it. Council created this problem – in 2002 when they implemented the Housing Diversity and Minimal Change Policy (the current zonings are an extension of this policy) and then proceeded to ignore all the promises they made regarding structure plans, traffic management, Neighbourhood Character Overlays, Open Space and Tree Protection etc. etc.

Crs, Souness, Delahunty and Okotel – 2012 -2016 – elected on promises of improvement/change have all consistently followed the old guard’s “don’t rock the administrations boat” party line.

Such is the quality of this leadership, that
. now, when other Councils, who did proper planning and the leg work required, are successfully arguing for additional planning controls/reductions, Glen Eira is without the foundations for making the same arguments.
. faced with the clear need to undertake that proper planning, rather than making it a priority and start addressing the developmental issues, Glen Eira has decided to a wait and see. Apparently, for this myopic Council, 13 years isn’t long enough.

Sounness & Delahunty are best described as 360 degree couple; they promise one thing to the public and do something else. Okotel seem to be getting better since mid 2014. Where is Lobo hiding these days? nothing much comes about him? Has he lifted his game? It may also be appropriate for Glen Eira to comment on the performances of each councillor as was done some 4 years ago. As a matter of fact, a paragraph or two on each of their performances would help us to read their progress card.